On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

FLT-bird: "Contrary to the laughable Northern propaganda posted here,

"The Confederate States accounted for 70% of total US exports by dollar value.
Cotton was the primary export, accounting for 75% of Southern trade in 1860."
Stanley Lebergott 'Why the South Lost:Commercial Purpose in the Confederacy' pp. 59–60"

So everyone can see the fake math at work, here's how you get from accurate, roughly 50% of US exports being "Southern Products", to the exaggerated 70% or more as claimed by our pro-Confederate propagandists:

$400 million actual total US exports in 1860
minus $58 million net specie (gold & silver) exports
= $342 million US merchandise exports
$342 million is revised from $316 million as incompletely reported on earlier documents.
$229 million in claimed "Southern Products" exports
including $11 million in manufactured cotton products -- Northern Products and
including $12 million in tobacco produced (of $19 million total) in Union states like Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana.
$229 million "Southern Products" divided by $342 million total exports = 67%,
or $229 million divided by originally reported $316 million = 72%.

That's how they arrive at 70%.
The true number is approximately 50%.

FLT-bird quoting:

"by 1860 the Southern states were paying in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs”
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, 2002, ISBN 0-7615-3641-8, page 135-126:"

That is so mind-bogglingly false, it deserves a Goebbels' Propaganda Award because, in fact:

No Southern state ever paid even one penny of any US tariff.
All tariffs were paid by citizens, not by states.
Those citizens might live in the North, South, East or West, but none were acting as officials of their state governments.
Over 90% of import tariffs were paid in major Union ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Francisco.
5% was paid at New Orleans, the largest Confederate state port
1% was paid at all other Confederate ports combined.
Suggestions that, somehow, magically -- it was actually Southerners living in Union ports who "paid for" import tariffs -- that's not supported by any evidence or logic, especially when you consider, virtually all imports were bulk raw materials whose customers were manufacturers of woolen, cotton, silk, iron and food products, the vast majority of those in Union states.
How then, exactly, do our pro-Confederates claim "the South" paid for import tariffs?
Well, obviously, you need exports to "pay for" imports, however "Southern products" "paid for" virtually no imports from overseas.
By all logic and evidence, nearly 100% of "Southern Products" export income was used to pay directly for "imports" from the North and Western US.
Southern "Imports" from the Union consisted mainly of "made in America" commodities:
- Woolen manufactures
- Shoes & other leather goods
- Cotton manufactures
- Silk products
- Iron products -- i.e., stoves, farm equipment, railroad
- Paper
- Soap and candles
- Tea
- Smoked fish
- Musical instruments
- Furniture
However, in nearly every commodity, Southerners did their own manufacturing as well, including:
- Flour Mills
- Carpenters, builders, lumber & cabinet makers
- Iron workers, including casters & forgers -- i.e., Tredegar (Richmond), Cumberland Furnace (Nashville) and E. Tennessee Iron (Chattanooga).
- Clothing manufactures from cotton and woolens
- Hemp products including rope, sacks and paper.
- Shoes and other leather products
Additionally, Southerners "exported" many items to the North, including:
- Raw cotton
- Tobacco
- Sugar
- Rice
- Turpentine and other naval stores
- Hemp products including rope, cloth and paper
- Livestock

Bottom line: in the years before 1861 there were huge volumes of interstate and inter-regional "exports" and "imports" which thoroughly mixed the earnings of one region with those of the others, such that there's no logical way to claim "The South" (or any other region) "paid for" Federal import tariffs which funded government in Washington, DC.

Finally, before we (thankfully) leave DiLorenzo entirely, we should notice that even he was so embarrassed by the laughable absurdity of this 80% claim that, in later versions of his book, he changed the wording to: Southern states "were paying the Lion's share of all tariffs".
So, it appears that even though DiLorenzo himself is too embarrassed to repeat his absurd 80% claim, our good FRiend FLT-bird is not.

FLT-bird: "The following are what lawyers call "Statements Against Interest"...ie frank admissions by Northern newspapers at the time admitting that the Southern states are providing the overwhelming share of all exports/imports."

In fact, those quotes do no such thing.

FLT-bird quoting: "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods.
What is our shipping without it?
Literally nothing.
The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade.
It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose.
No, we must not let the South go."
The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861"

There's no disputing that Southern cotton was important to New Hampshire textile mills, and so a New Hampshire newspaper will say whatever it needs to, to keep commerce flowing.
Of course, this had nothing directly to do with foreign exports or imports.

Further, typical propagandist -- has taken the quote out of context and so reversed its original meaning.
Here is the real point of that quote:

"No—we must not "let the South go."
It is easy and honorable to keep her.
Simply recognize in the neighborhood of states those principles of equity and courtesy which we would scorn to violate in our social relations at home—that is all.
Let New Hampshire treat Virginia as we should treat our neighbors.
Do we vilify them, watch for chances to annoy them, clear up to the line of the law, and sometimes beyond it, and encourage hostile raids against them?
Is that good neighborhood?
Then, let not one state practice it against another."

So, the Manchester, NH, newspaper wants Northerners to make nice with Southerners, a sentiment we all share.

FLT-bird: "December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce:

"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is.
Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands.
One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves.
We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits.
Our manufactories would be in utter ruins.
Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."
Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860"

Our FRiend x has already dealt with the fact that the Chicago Times was a pro-slavery, pro-South, Copperhead Democrat newspaper, which is here hardly advising "against interest".

Regardless of that, the Chicago Times in this quote exactly confirms my argument for many years that Southern exports accounted for roughly half of US total exports, not 70% or 80% or any other such ridiculous number.

FLT-bird quoting:

"It is not a war for Negro Liberty, but for national despotism.
It is a tariff war, an aristocratic war, a pro-slavery war."
Abolitionist George Basset May 1861 American Missionary Association"

This quote, if accurate (I can't confirm it), would be from Bassett's second pamphlet, "A Discourse on the Wickedness and Folly of the Present War, 24p., August 11, 1861".
Bassett was a rare combination of abolitionist and secessionist.
In 1860 there were several notable pro-secession abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greely.
After Fort Sumter in 1861, there were none that I can find beyond this George W. Bassett, and even he seem rather... ah... elusive.

FLT-bird: "Even after the fact, Northerners were saying the same things:

'This question of tariffs and taxation, and not the negro question, keeps our country divided....the men of New York were called upon to keep out the Southern members because if they were admitted they would uphold [ie hold up or obstruct] our commercial greatness.'
Governor of New York Horatio Seymour on not readmitting Southern representatives to Congress 1866"

This alleged proof-text doesn't seem to prove anything except, perhaps, that tariffs were always, politically as controversial as they were necessary.

FLT-bird: "Foreign sources noticed the same thing:

"If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …
Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance.
With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived …'
– Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862"

Charles Dickens is often quoted on these CW threads and almost as often it's noted that while Dickens opposed slavery in theory, he also hated Northerners (because they had cheated him of royalties) and admired aristocratic Southerners.
In this particular quote, Dickens ties secession to the election of Republican Lincoln, an action which was also threatened in the election of 1856, and for the same reasons -- "Black Republicans' " threats to slavery.

FLT-bird: "But hey, who ya gonna believe - Observers on all sides at the time as well as economists and tax experts who have studied the period....or a PC Revisionist with his little fantasies about how taxes and the economy really work?"

That "PC Revisionist" posting here under the screen name of FLT-bird?

So everyone can see the fake math at work, here's how you get from accurate, roughly 50% of US exports being "Southern Products", to the exaggerated 70% or more as claimed by our pro-Confederate propagandists:

I recall once a long time ago that I got you to admit it was at least 60%. I remarked on it at the time, that perhaps with a little more coaxing, I could get you all the way up to the number we can see in the official records.

72%.

DiogenesLamp: "I recall once a long time ago that I got you to admit it was at least 60%.
I remarked on it at the time, that perhaps with a little more coaxing, I could get you all the way up to the number we can see in the official records.

72%."

You can see it yourself now in my post #221 above, how to distort the actual ~50% into something resembling 70%.
All you have to do is delete $58 million in specie exports from the US total ($400 million minus $58 million = $342 million) and then add Union tobacco ($12 million), plus Union manufactures of cotton ($11 million), to the Confederate side ($206m plus $23m = $229 million).
$229 divided by $342, gets you up to 67%.

Then if you divide by the smaller preliminary total merchandise export number reported at the time, $316 million, instead of the larger final number, $342 million, you can goose 67% all the way up to 73%.

And if all you are looking for is a number you can weaponize in propaganda against the United States, then that just might be good enough.

But, if you care about facts and truth, then, no, not so much.

FLT-bird: "The "we must not let the South go" editorial makes it plain what the economic cost to the Northern States would be if the Southern states left.
It plainly states that the Southern states would win economically and the Northern States would lose.
*If* one is pushing the "all about slavery" argument then it is indeed a statement against interest.
Here is a northern newspaper making the economic argument quite clearly."

This is the same argument DiogenesLamp has made for years, and it's just as false here as it is when he makes it, because:

First, "all about slavery" begins with declarations of secession and their official "Reasons for Secession" documents, which did emphasize slavery in every case.

Second, "all about slavery" doesn't mean secessionists didn't have other complaints to throw in at the same time, which we've reviewed at length now:

"Reasons for Secession" Documents before Fort Sumter -- % of words devoted to each reason *

Reasons for Secession	S. Carolina	Mississippi	Georgia	Texas	Rbt. Rhett	A. Stephens	AVERAGE OF 6
Historical context	41%	20%	23%	21%	20%	20%	24%
Slavery	20%	73%	56%	54%	35%	50%	48%
States' Rights	37%	3%	4%	15%	15%	10%	14%
Lincoln's election	2%	4%	4%	4%	5%	0%	3%
Economic issues**	0	0	15%	0%	25%	20%	10%
Military protection	0	0	0	6%	0%	0%	1%

* Alabama listed only slavery in its "whereas" reasons for secession.
** Economic issues include tariffs, "fishing smacks" and other alleged favoritism to Northerners in Federal spending.

Third, nobody has ever argued that "all about slavery" referred to the Union responses to secession -- that is a complete strawman.
Instead, the first Union response was, in effect: secession "at pleasure" is not constitutional and if it results in war, then we will fight to restore the Union.
Many in the Union also looked for "compromises" they might offer to prevent further secessions, and these "compromises" were always "all about slavery".
Fourth, the Battle of Fort Sumter, which launched the Civil War, had nothing directly to do with slavery, but was "all about" Jefferson Davis asserting Confederate "sovereignty" and winning over Upper South states to secession.
Finally, "all about slavery" did play out throughout the war, beginning with freedom for "Contraband of War" and the Emancipation Proclamation for the North, along with many Confederate comments on the subject:

Slavery as a reason for secession and civil war was mentioned by many prominent Southerners over many years before, during and after the war:

Here are some, listed in date sequence:

1849: "Henry L. Benning, Georgia politician and future Confederate general, writing in the summer of 1849 to his fellow Georgian, Howell Cobb (GA Governor, Buchanan’s Sec of Treasury):
Later in the same letter Benning says,
1856: "Richmond Enquirer, 1856:
1858: "Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America:
1858: Speech of Jefferson Davis before the Mississippi Legislature (16 November 1858)
1859 -- "Richard Thompson Archer (Mississippi planter):
1859: "Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia:
1860: "Atlanta Confederacy, 1860:
1860: "Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on January 25, 1860:
Later in the same speech he said,
1860: "Keitt again, this time as delegate to the South Carolina secession convention, during the debates on the state's declaration of causes:
Taken from the Charleston, South Carolina, Courier, dated Dec. 22, 1860.
See the Furman documents site for more transcription from these debates.
Keitt became a colonel in the Confederate army and was killed at Cold Harbor on June 1, 1864."
1860: “William Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860:
1860: "Senator Louis Trezevant Wigfall; December 11, 1860, on the floor of the Senate;
1860: "Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell:
1861: Jefferson Davis made a farewell address to the Senate, in January 1861.
1861: "John Tyler Morgan, Dallas County, Alabama; also speaking to the Alabama Secession Convention on January 25, 1861:
1861: "Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas, March 2, 1861, Arkansas Secession Convention, p. 44
1861: from Lincoln's first inaugural address, on March 4, 1861:
1861: from CSA VP Alexander Stephens's "Cornerstone Speech," seventeen days later:
1861: "Thomas F. Goode, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, March 28, 1861, Virginia Secession Convention, vol. II, p. 518,
1861: "Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina:
1862: "The Vidette, a camp newspaper for Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan's cavalry brigade.
In one of the November, 1862 issues, the following appeared:
1863: "William Nugent to Eleanor Nugent, Sept 7, 1863:
1864: "Catherine Ann Devereux Edmonston, December 30, 1864:
1864: "CS Brigadier General Clement Stevens:
1894: CSA Col. John S. Mosby – leader of “Mosby’s Rangers”:
1907: Letter from Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)
1997: James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), p. 106.[40]
“McPherson states that Confederate soldiers did not discuss the issue of slavery as often as United States soldiers did, because most Confederate soldiers readily accepted as an obvious fact that they were fighting to perpetuate slavery and thus did not feel the need to debate over it:
“Continuing, McPherson also stated that of the hundreds of Confederate soldiers' letters he had examined, none of them contained any anti-slavery sentiment whatsoever:
— James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), p. 110, emphasis in original.[41]

Bottom line: there's no doubt that protecting slavery was important to many Confederates as was abolition to many Unionists.
Others eventually began to say the war was really over something else:

Fortunately, Jefferson Davis did not get his wish in either case.

brojoeK: So everyone can see the fake math at work, here's how you get from accurate, roughly 50% of US exports being "Southern Products", to the exaggerated 70% or more as claimed by our pro-Confederate propagandists: $400 million actual total US exports in 1860 minus $58 million net specie (gold & silver) exports = $342 million US merchandise exports $342 million is revised from $316 million as incompletely reported on earlier documents. $229 million in claimed "Southern Products" exports including $11 million in manufactured cotton products -- Northern Products and including $12 million in tobacco produced (of $19 million total) in Union states like Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana. $229 million "Southern Products" divided by $342 million total exports = 67%, or $229 million divided by originally reported $316 million = 72%. That's how they arrive at 70%. The true number is approximately 50%.

Gosh, it seems awfully strange that Southern politicians before the war, Northern politicians before the war, Foreign observers, Northern Newspapers, Southern Newspapers, Foreign Newspapers, Tax experts and Economists look at the trade flows before the war and all come to the conclusion that the Southern states were providing about 3/4s of all exports, yet some guy on a message board comes to a different conclusion ie that they were only providing 50%. LOL!

BroJoeK: That is so mind-bogglingly false, it deserves a Goebbels' Propaganda Award because, in fact: No Southern state ever paid even one penny of any US tariff. All tariffs were paid by citizens, not by states. Those citizens might live in the North, South, East or West, but none were acting as officials of their state governments.

People in those states who produced the exports, genius.

BroJoeK: Over 90% of import tariffs were paid in major Union ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Francisco. 5% was paid at New Orleans, the largest Confederate state port 1% was paid at all other Confederate ports combined. Suggestions that, somehow, magically -- it was actually Southerners living in Union ports who "paid for" import tariffs -- that's not supported by any evidence or logic, especially when you consider, virtually all imports were bulk raw materials whose customers were manufacturers of woolen, cotton, silk, iron and food products, the vast majority of those in Union states.

ROTF! Now you're trying to twist it to claim I've said Southerners living in those ports paid the tariff???? Nope. Never said any such thing. I said the OWNERS OF THE GOODS paid the tariff. Those Owners were Southerners....the very same Southerners who owned the exports those goods had been exchanged for.

BroJoeK: How then, exactly, do our pro-Confederates claim "the South" paid for import tariffs? Well, obviously, you need exports to "pay for" imports, however "Southern products" "paid for" virtually no imports from overseas.

Huh? This is laughably false. Southern Products like cotton, tobacco, etc were sold in those markets and the money used to buy manufactured goods which then filled the holds of the ships that had previously held the cotton and tobacco on their way across the Atlantic. What planet are you from?

BroJoeK: By all logic and evidence, nearly 100% of "Southern Products" export income was used to pay directly for "imports" from the North and Western US.

Again, LOL! No. It was used to buy European manufactured goods which were sold on the market all over the US. So SOME of what Southerners bought by way of manufactured goods came from Northern manufacturers, and SOME came from European manufacturers. It was the same all over the US.

BroJoeK: Southern "Imports" from the Union consisted mainly of "made in America" commodities: blah blah blah Bottom line: in the years before 1861 there were huge volumes of interstate and inter-regional "exports" and "imports" which thoroughly mixed the earnings of one region with those of the others, such that there's no logical way to claim "The South" (or any other region) "paid for" Federal import tariffs which funded government in Washington, DC.

Yeah...this is laughably false. The major exports were Cotton and Tobacco and to a lesser extent by the mid 19th century, grain primarily from the Midwest. The Northeast exported practically nothing and never had exported anything. The Cotton and Tobacco came from the South, were owned by Southerners, were exchanged for foreign manufactured goods and were then hit with the tariff when they made the journey back across the Atlantic.

BroJoek: Finally, before we (thankfully) leave DiLorenzo entirely, we should notice that even he was so embarrassed by the laughable absurdity of this 80% claim that, in later versions of his book, he changed the wording to: Southern states "were paying the Lion's share of all tariffs". So, it appears that even though DiLorenzo himself is too embarrassed to repeat his absurd 80% claim, our good FRiend FLT-bird is not.

We can argue over exact percentages. I've seen numerous authors say anywhere from 70% to 80%. It will depend on the year I suppose. The bottom line is that the Southern states provided the vast majority of all exports from the US and always had. The only one who even tries to dispute this obvious fact is you.

BroJoeK: In fact, those quotes do no such thing.

In fact, they do exactly that.

BroJoek: There's no disputing that Southern cotton was important to New Hampshire textile mills, and so a New Hampshire newspaper will say whatever it needs to, to keep commerce flowing. Of course, this had nothing directly to do with foreign exports or imports.

Notice, this quote says nothing about New Hampshire Textile Mills. It talks about shipping. "employ our ships" and "shipping".

BroJoeK: Further, typical propagandist -- has taken the quote out of context and so reversed its original meaning.

This from the guy who attempted to make it about textile mills when it did not say anything about that yet tries desperately to ignore shipping which it speaks of directly.

BroJoeK: Here is the real point of that quote: "No—we must not "let the South go." blah blah blah

So, the Manchester, NH, newspaper wants Northerners to make nice with Southerners, a sentiment we all share.

No. Its not really just "make nice". Its make any concession necessary with regard to slavery. That's really what they were urging. That was THE common sentiment in the North at the time. It is a sentiment Lincoln and the Republicans shared. That is why they were willing to offer express protections of slavery in the US Constitution effectively forever via the Corwin Amendment. The North didn't really care about slavery. They just wanted THE MONEY from the Southern states.

BroJoeK: Our FRiend x has already dealt with the fact that the Chicago Times was a pro-slavery, pro-South, Copperhead Democrat newspaper, which is here hardly advising "against interest". Regardless of that, the Chicago Times in this quote exactly confirms my argument for many years that Southern exports accounted for roughly half of US total exports, not 70% or 80% or any other such ridiculous number.

You persist in claiming that somehow Northern Democrats were not Northerners and did not represent Northern interests....even though they had to be elected by Northerners. ie, your claims are ridiculous. And the Chicago paper here said LESS THAN HALF. Not half. Less than. Read it again.

BroJoeK: This quote, if accurate (I can't confirm it), would be from Bassett's second pamphlet, "A Discourse on the Wickedness and Folly of the Present War, 24p., August 11, 1861". Bassett was a rare combination of abolitionist and secessionist. In 1860 there were several notable pro-secession abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greely. After Fort Sumter in 1861, there were none that I can find beyond this George W. Bassett, and even he seem rather... ah... elusive.

""The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals. No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degree --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure." – Lysander Spooner

"Notwithstanding all the proclamations we have made to mankind within the last 90 years — that our government rested on consent, and that that was the only rightful basis on which any government could rest — the late war has practically demonstrated that our government rests upon force: as much so as any government that ever existed. The North has thus virtually said to the world, "It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connection with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great national union. But now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the power of the North has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us — as for all governments — simply to say, Our power is our right." In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people than any other government ever did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief glory of her success, and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and an ample justification for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity or power of the government is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds of the people.

In short, the North exults beyond measure in the proof she has given that a government professedly resting on consent will expend more life and treasure in crushing dissent than any government openly founded on force has ever done.

And she claims that she has done all this on behalf of liberty! On behalf of free government! On behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent!" Lysander Spooner in No Treason

BroJoeK: This alleged proof-text doesn't seem to prove anything except, perhaps, that tariffs were always, politically as controversial as they were necessary.

What it proves is that the Tariff issue was always the real bone of contention between the regions - not slavery.

BroJoeK: Charles Dickens is often quoted on these CW threads and almost as often it's noted that while Dickens opposed slavery in theory, he also hated Northerners (because they had cheated him of royalties) and admired aristocratic Southerners. In this particular quote, Dickens ties secession to the election of Republican Lincoln, an action which was also threatened in the election of 1856, and for the same reasons -- "Black Republicans' " threats to slavery.

I love how everybody who provides a quote you don't like somehow has some sinister ulterior motive or personal grudge or some other reason. It can't possibly be that they are simply reflecting the reality. Only you have a total monopoly on that. LOL!

BroJoeK: That "PC Revisionist" posting here under the screen name of FLT-bird?,/p>

No, the PC Revisionist is obviously you. I don't spout Leftist dogma and historical revisionism here. I leave that to you.

BroJoeK: Here is a northern newspaper making the economic argument quite clearly." This is the same argument DiogenesLamp has made for years, and it's just as false here as it is when he makes it, because: First, "all about slavery" begins with declarations of secession and their official "Reasons for Secession" documents, which did emphasize slavery in every case. Second, "all about slavery" doesn't mean secessionists didn't have other complaints to throw in at the same time, which we've reviewed at length now:

No, the argument is completely true. And the "all about slavery" myth is exactly what it says. It claims the only reason the Southern states left was slavery. As we have pointed out:

Slavery was not threatened in the US

If anybody thought it was, the North passed the Corwin Amendment and Lincoln offered it in his inaugural address if the original 7 seceding states would return

The Original 7 seceding states turned down that offer

The Northern states' violation of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution provided the Southern states the PRETEXT they needed to say the other side violated the compact and they were thus justified in leaving. It was not the reason why they left and they were not interested in any remedy to it the North offered

BroJoeK: "Reasons for Secession" Documents blah blah blah

Slavery was the legal pretext, not the real reason.

BroJoeK: Instead, the first Union response was, in effect: secession "at pleasure" is not constitutional and if it results in war, then we will fight to restore the Union. Many in the Union also looked for "compromises" they might offer to prevent further secessions, and these "compromises" were always "all about slavery".

The Union position was they did not want to see their cash cows leave and they threatened violence if they did...but they were willing to make pretty much any concession with respect to protecting slavery. The Confederate position was slavery was not their real concern and they were not interested in any concessions over slavery. What they wanted was their Independence. They knew they would be much better off if they could get out from under the rule of Imperial Washington.

BroJoeK: Fourth, the Battle of Fort Sumter, which launched the Civil War, had nothing directly to do with slavery, but was "all about" Jefferson Davis asserting Confederate "sovereignty" and winning over Upper South states to secession.

False, Fort Sumter was about South Carolina defending its sovereign territory from union invasion.

BroJoeK: Finally, "all about slavery" did play out throughout the war, beginning with freedom for "Contraband of War" and the Emancipation Proclamation for the North, along with many Confederate comments on the subject: Slavery as a reason for secession and civil war was mentioned by many prominent Southerners over many years before, during and after the war:

In 1862, one English publication issued the following commentary regarding the Emancipation Proclamation:

“…But as time went on, and the issues of the war came out more clearly, this spring of Northern sympathies began to fail. It soon became apparent that the grievance of the South went very far beyond the mere refusal to allow slaves to be held in the territories of the United States, and it became still more clear that whatever the North was fighting for, it was not for the emancipation of the Negro. It was impossible to believe that the North was crusading for abolition, in the face of the President’s reiterated denials, and of the inhuman treatment which Negroes were constantly receiving at Northern hands. If anything was wanting to confirm their skepticism, it has been supplied. Emancipation to be a military resource of his extreme necessity, shows how little he cared for it as a philanthropist. He values it not for the freedom it may confer, but for the carnage that it may cause.”

The North certainly did not go to war to end slavery just as the South did not go to war to preserve it. Many Southerners said before the war and even during the war that preservation of slavery was not what they were fighting for or what they seceded for.

BroJoeK: Here are some, listed in date sequence: blah blah blah

The Southern states were as Democratic as the Northern states from the founding of the Republic right through to the present day. People's opinions differed and they felt free to express those opinions. There is no doubt some Southerners felt they were seceding over the slavery issue. There is equally no doubt that many did not.

“In any case, I think slave property will be lost eventually.” Jefferson Davis 1861

Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war "was for the defense of the institution of slavery" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim "demagogues." Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted "the Confederates were not battling for slavery" and that "slavery had never been the key issue" (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).

Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a "moral and political evil" years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232). By late 1864, Davis was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy. Duncan Kenner, one of the biggest slaveholders in the South and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives, strongly supported this proposal. So did the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. Davis informed congressional leaders of his intentions, and then sent Kenner to Europe to make the proposal. Davis even made Kenner a minister plenipotentiary so as to ensure he could make the proposal to the British and French governments and that it would be taken seriously.

"The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism." Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty to seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

"The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue," John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question," March 4, 1850

On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South."

"Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this." ----Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton

"Northerners are the fount of most troubles in the new Union. Connecticut and Massachusetts EXHAUST OUR STRENGTH AND SUBSTANCE and its inhabitants are marked by such a perversity of character they have divided themselves from the rest of America - Thomas Jefferson in an 1820 letter

"Neither “love for the African” [witness the Northern laws against him], nor revulsion from “property in persons” [“No, you imported Africans and sold them as chattels in the slave markets”] motivated the present day agitators,"…... “No sir….the mask is off, the purpose is avowed…It is a struggle for political power." Jefferson Davis 1848

"If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity." -Alexander Stephens

“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Jefferson Davis 1860 speech in the US Senate

Georgia’s declaration of causes does talk about slavery a lot. It also talks about economics. To wit:

“The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.

But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.

All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon……”

South Carolina Senator/Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett aka "the Father of Secession" wrote the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860 to accompany its secession ordinance.

"The Revolution of 1776, turned upon one great principle, self government, and self taxation, the criterion of self government. Where the interests of two people united together under one Government, are different, each must have the power to protect its interests by the organization of the Government, or they cannot be free. The interests of Great Britain and of the Colonies, were different and antagonistic. Great Britain was desirous of carrying out the policy of all nations toward their Colonies, of making them tributary to their wealth and power. She had vast and complicated relations with the whole world. Her policy toward her North American Colonies, was to identify them with her in all these complicated relations; and to make them bear, in common with the rest of the Empire, the full burden of her obligations and necessities. She had a vast public debt; she had a European policy and an Asiatic policy, which had occasioned the accumulation of her public debt, and which kept her in continual wars. The North American Colonies saw their interests, political and commercial, sacrificed by such a policy. Their interests required, that they should not be identified with the burdens and wars of the mother country. They had been settled under Charters, which gave them self government, at least so far as their property was concerned. They had taxed themselves, and had never been taxed by the Government of Great Britain. To make them a part of a consolidated Empire, the Parliament of Great Britain determined to assume the power of legislating for the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. Our ancestors resisted the pretension. They refused to be a part of the consolidated Government of Great Britain.

The Southern States, now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern States, that the Colonies did towards Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British parliament. "The General Welfare," is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation, this "General Welfare" requires. Thus, the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government; and the people of the Southern State, are compelled to meet the very despotism, their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.

And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.

There is another evil, in the condition of the Southern toward the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear toward Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them, were expended among them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them, would have been expended in other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure. To prevent the evils of such a policy, was one of the motives which drove them on to Revolution. Yet this British policy, has been fully realized towards the Southern States, by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others, connected with the operation of the General Government, has made the cities of the South provincial. Their growth is paralyzed; they are mere suburbs of Northern cities. The agricultural productions of the South are the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade, is almost annihilated…… To make, however, their numerical power available to rule the Union, the North must consolidate their power. It would not be united, on any matter common to the whole Union in other words, on any constitutional subject for on such subjects divisions are as likely to exist in the North as in the South. Slavery was strictly, a sectional interest. If this could be made the criterion of parties at the North, the North could be united in its power; and thus carry out its measures of sectional ambition, encroachment, and aggrandizement. To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things.

"The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other. And the danger of disruption arising from this cause was enhanced by the fact that the Northern population was increasing, by immigration and other causes, in a greater ratio than the population of the South. By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as a majority to govern the minority without control." Jefferson Davis Address to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861

"I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it." Robert E. Lee in a letter to Lord Acton

"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages" Robert E. Lee

"Slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any Country". Robert E Lee in an 1856 letter to his daughter Mary

In his book What They Fought For, 1861-1865, historian James McPherson reported on his reading of more than 25,000 letters and more than 100 diaries of soldiers who fought on both sides of the War for Southern Independence and concluded that Confederate soldiers "fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government." The letters and diaries of many Confederate soldiers "bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self government," writes McPherson, and spoke of a fear of being "subjugated" and "enslaved" by a tyrannical federal government......it was hilarious how chief PC Revisionist McPherson tried desperately to spin this.

On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South."

". . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .

"The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . .

". . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders' reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction." (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864

In the North, enforcement of the Morrill Tariff contributed to support for the Union cause among industrialists and merchant interests. Speaking of this class, the abolitionist Orestes Brownson derisively remarked that "the Morrill Tariff moved them more than the fall of Sumter."

Alexander Stephens. Often quoted in regards to his “Cornerstone Speech,” he is seldom quoted in his assessment of the factors motivating the North’s belligerence. - “Their philanthropy yields to their interests. Notwithstanding their professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor…The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after – though they come from the labor of the slave.”

George McDuffie of South Carolina stated in the House of Representatives, "If the union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, historians who record these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation." While the Northern manufacturer enjoyed free trade with the South, the Southern planter was not allowed to enjoy free trade with those countries to which he could market his goods at the most benefit to himself. Furthermore, while the six cotton States — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — had less than one-eighth of the representation in Congress, they furnished two-thirds of the exports of the country, much of which was exchanged for imported necessities. Thus, McDuffie noted that because the import tariff effectively hindered Southern commerce, the relation which the Cotton States bore to the protected manufacturing States of the North was now the same as that which the colonies had once borne to Great Britain; under the current system, they had merely changed masters.

Robert Barnwell Rhett, who served in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, said in 1850: "The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives." Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:

The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city."

James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, "I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy."

John H. Reagan of Texas, who would later become Postmaster-General of the Confederate Government, expressed similar sentiments when addressing the Republican members of the House of Representatives on 15 January 1861:

"You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions.

We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition. But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to assert and maintain our separate independence. It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests."

I recall once a long time ago that I got you to admit it was at least 60%. I remarked on it at the time, that perhaps with a little more coaxing, I could get you all the way up to the number we can see in the official records. 72%.

He has his own math and comes up with his own numbers. Just as everybody at the time who said something he disagrees with had some sinister ulterior motive and couldn't possibly be speaking the truth...even when a whole bunch of them on all sides said it. No No No. He has a complete monopoly on the truth. LOL!